Well, hello there!

This post has been awhile in the making!

I would spend five or ten minutes editing photos and then get pulled away into other things…

then I would spend another five minutes here and there on photos.

I have had conversations with my hubby about this little ole blog of ours –

Do we keep it?

When blogging really isn’t much of a thing anymore?

He always encourages me to keep the blog and keep our memories here!

This actually IS our family scrapbook, after all!

I hope to print the blog into scrapbooks (you can do that!) someday when it fits in the budget so that we can have those books for the kiddos to enjoy.

That all to say – I think I am going to change the format here, take a great idea from a sweet friend of mine, and do a weekly recap post every week.

It will be more manageable!

And it will get our memories recorded.

First, let’s recap September!!

September was LOVELY.

With all our new normal things.

We settled into fall after getting home from family camp, into full days of school, and having Chad start his senior year.

I just realized I did not get an official photo of Chad on his first day of school.

Oops!!

I do have this one though – Chad working on his on-line math.

School has been so enjoyable!!

We still start our day with Bible time, worship, Bible memory and a devotional.

Art class is definitely the highlight of our week.

We have been having so much fun learning how to paint!!

For one of our art classes I did not have the right supplies.

I decided to make it a “free” art day, where we could just paint whatever we want.

I honestly thought it was a recipe for disaster and would frustrate some of my students!

I was thankful to be proved wrong.

They LOVED doing free art day!

And I think their paintings were amazing!!

I plan to frame them!

School days are my favorite.

Can you tell?!

Eliza’s cursive pages crack me up.

I did actually save her with chocolate that day!

She was struggling…so I made it fun and laid some chocolate chips by her and told her they were her brain food!

We are still enjoying piano very much too.

Tate and Eliza took their first assessment test at the end of September and moved up to Level 2!

Good job, kiddos!

Reading aloud to the children is something that I have been doing for 28 years now!

It is a HUGE part of our lives.

We have read some really good books lately!

We all LOVE, love, love having Chad home more these days!

Especially his pup, Sadie Jo.

She doesn’t leave his side when he is here!

We get to be Sadie’s favorite people on the days when Chad is not home.

Eliza calls Sadie her foot warmer!

Everyone’s schedule has slowed down for fall and winter.

Seasonal jobs will do that to you!

That means the kitchen is busier than ever.

I was just thanking the Lord this morning during my prayer time that He still gives me so much joy in the kitchen!

I hope He always will!

It makes it way more fun when I have such a great trio of helpers.

We have still been enjoying Joanna Gaines’s cooking show, and Kayla bought me one of her cookbooks!

It is beautiful and we enjoy it too!

Tate and I made her pickles one day and THEY ARE SO GOOD!

We just keep refilling that jar every time it gets low!

I still enjoy the cookbooks I have too.

You will usually find me flipping through them while my kiddos work on Math.

This photo means SO much to me.

I seriously want to frame it!

This child is tiny, but you would NEVER know.

He finds a way to do everything he wants to do!

His love for cooking make me SO happy!

I seriously have tears in my eyes just typing these words.

Just look at him.

We are not worthy.

This is what Saturdays can look like around here.

Our kitchen gets a beating every day, ha, ha!!

I drank that kombucha and then cleaned up that mess!

And then I cleaned the fridge too!!

Just in case you think I have it all together, I am feeding my children things like frozen pizza lately.

When I posted that photo on Instagram saying “I do not even know who I am anymore,” my very wise friend told me I am just simply old.

Crack me up!

Love that friend of mine!

That trio of helpers sometimes helps with grocery shopping too.

I love doing grocery with them!

It takes a dreaded job and makes it a fun filled outing!

They enjoy it too.

Especially when the guy paying for the grocery buys them a treat for after we get home and get everything put away.

As they ate that ice cream that evening, much after their normal bed time, I remembered that I had fed them cereal for dinner.

Clearly winning here.

Our afternoons have been full of my favorite fall things!

Getting outside always comes first (its mandatory here!), but we like to play games too.

The kiddos are very good at finding things to do after school if we are home!

I like to read in the afternoons if I can find the time.

I have been re-reading this book – SO GOOD.

It is definitely a favorite book of mine!

I would encourage everyone to read it – not just mamas – but MAMAS….YOU NEED TO READ THIS BOOK!

Here is another good thing I should tell you all about.

Young Living’s new cleaner.

This stuff is amazing!

It has NO chemicals!

I can let the kids use it with no worries.

Now, that is the mark of a great cleaning tool.

Another great Young Living thing I added in September was not from Young Living but from the dollar spot at Target.

This little wooden tray was the perfect fix to hold all of our most used essential oil rollers!

The kiddos can find what they need easily now and we tend to use them a lot more when they are easily accessible.

Tate is still doing his therapy.

It is really helping him!

He does a lot of stretching at home, and once a week we are at pool therapy.

September brought our monthly hymn sing…such a favorite!

We also were blessed to attend a concert of some of our favorites and the venue was beautiful!

Blake and I enjoy date night when we can!

Some date nights we have to get grocery, and other date nights include both grocery and a million errands…but we are together!

Here are Tate and Eliza on a Saturday morning after a date night shopping for fall clothes for them!

It took a new dress to get my “not a morning girl” up off that chair, ha, ha!

We get together with our favorites on Sundays after church, and I look forward to Sundays SO much!!

I hardly ever take a photo on a Sunday, but here are some of our ever growing littlest grand babe, Aspen Praise.

Addie Mae did a beautiful job on the front porch back in September!

The weather has been so nice that our porch is still looking that beautiful!

Out of the blue one day we received a box in the mail – which is not unusual when you have many people who order things – there always seems to be deliveries here.

But this box was from Morton, Illinois, which is where we lived before we moved to Wisconsin.

Our SWEETEST friends, who live in Florida, sent us a box of scones from our favorite coffee shop in Morton!

I KNOW!!

They just wanted to bless us, and bless us they did!

Those scones were gone so fast!

September found me like this at least once a day, or twice a day – resting in bed or on the couch.

Autoimmune disease acts this way – it waxes and wanes.

We are doing some things to try to get this llooonnnnggg flare-up under control, and just this last week I have been feeling a lot better. Hopeful!!

We are enjoying our new coffee shop that is right up the road.

It is especially a fun spot in the spring and summer because of their beautiful patio they have.

We stopped there after church one Sunday on a beautiful, blue, sunny day – my favorite!

Last, but certainly not least, let’s look at God’s handiwork during the month of September!

Just so you know it is really me typing this post, I mean.

Well, now you know why this post was awhile in the making!

And why I am stream lining things into one recap post a week!

It is all memories worth keeping!

I am thankful my hubby keeps encouraging me to keep them!

I can’t wait, Lord willing, to have real scrapbooks printed from all these years of memories someday!

We love to look at our scrapbooks that I used to make before I started this little ole blog – they are fun to look at.

Thanks for joining me here in our family scrapbook.

Especially if you made it all the way to the end, ha, ha!

FALL IS HERE!

I hope you all are enjoying it too!

We love a change of seasons around here, and are looking forward to all fall allows.

Don’t forget to look around and praise the Lord for it ALL!

God bless each one of you!!